The city of Santa Cruz, Calif,. wastewater treatment facility, which processes an average daily flow of 10 million gallons, has reduced its lighting energy use and cost by more than 50 percent.

The facility recently upgraded its exterior and site lighting from high-pressure sodium (HPS) and mercury vapor (MV) fixtures to Dialight LED fixtures in an effort to reduce energy use and improve visibility. The HPS and MV fixtures required constant maintenance, generated poor light quality and were more expensive to operated, Dialight said.

The lighting upgrade project, which took five days to complete the installation, is expected to pay for itself in a little more than three years through efficiency improvements, reduced maintenance costs and a local incentive that provided a $5,000 rebate based on energy savings.

The LED lights are expected to last more than 10 years. LED fixtures draw, on average, less than half the wattage of high pressure sodium and mercury vapor, Dialight said.

The lighting upgrade is part of a citywide Climate Action Program to reduce energy use. The wastewater treatment facility replaced 82 fixtures in its solids dewatering building, pre-aeration and tricking filters with Dialight’s DuroSite LED fixtures.

Dialight unveiled a new solid state power supply technology last month that will debut on the company’s line of LED High Bay products for industrial and hazardous location in the second quarter of 2013. The solid state power supply, which has an expected life of 20 years, will be integrated into additional Dialight fixture families this year.

The new power supply will initially improve fixture lumen-per-watt efficiency to more than 110 lm/W, Dialight said.

The title is slightly misleading. Glad to see the reduction in consumption nonetheless, however, in a facility such as a WWTP, with all the pumps, aerators and other energy intensive equipment the lighting load is incredibly tiny when compared to facility electricity consumption, thus generating confusion with the title.